Missouri Republican Senate nominee Todd "Legitimate Rape" Akin may be a quivering slime mold with a side part of a human being, and the Republican establishment may have publicly distanced itself from him, but that doesn't mean they don't still kind of want him to win. And now that the media spotlight is shining its outrage beam on something else (Paul Ryan lied about his marathon time!), Akin and some GOP groups are quietly reconciling, like that couple you knew in your early twenties that would constantly get into loud, coked out break up fights in bars but who you were pretty sure followed up those bar fights by going home and having weird drug sex.

Republicans were pretty cocky about winning the Senate back this year — twenty-four Democratic seats are up for grabs, and several of those seats were located in states with large populations of people with a propensity for forwarding around birther emails that call Michelle Obama "Moochelle." Incumbant Democrat Claire McCaskill's seat in Missouri was considered an election that was the Republicans' to lose, until it appeared that Rep. Todd Akin's comments on how the female body works when it's being raped — it's nearly impossible for a victim of "legitimate rape" to get pregnant, you see, because the ladybody has ways to "shut that whole thing down" (Like when you get your phone's password wrong 10 times in a row and all of the information gets wiped clean because the phone knows that shenanigans are afoot. Too bad Apple doesn't make fallopian tubes.) — reminded voters that they were dangerously close to electing an actual crazy person to the Senate.

Anyway, according to the Washington Post, since the initial legitimate rape shitstorm ended with an awkward standoff between the GOP and Akin ("Quit the race now, or else!" "No." "Okay."), some GOP groups have rekindled their relationship with Akin. The legal deadline for the Congressman to remove his name from the November ballot is September 25, and despite the fact that the National Republican Senatorial Committee has vowed that they won't give Akin any money and the fact that local TV stations have cancelled Akin ads on account of the fact that his brokeass campaign can't pay for them, the race is still surprisingly closely contested — there's only a single digit gap between McCaskill and Akin among likely voters, and Missouri GOP groups have signed resolutions in support of the embattled candidate. There have also been reports of right wing groups sending undercover journalists to McCaskill's events in the hopes of catching her saying something damning and controversial like "Unions are good." or "Obamacare sounds like a good idea." or "I believe that women are human beings," which they could then turn into commercials that air during Wheel of Fortune.

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In the wake of Rapegate, McCaskill has been trying to spotlight some of Todd Akin's other cuckoo clock views — like the time he referred to federal student loan programs as a "Stage 3 cancer of socialism." She's trying to bring other issues into the forefront because, for many voters, knowing that a guy is a living affront to women everywhere isn't enough to change their minds about voting for him. America wants to talk about jobs, not the fact that Todd Akin appears to be break-into-coatrooms-and-pee-in-other-people's-hats off his rocker.

So, even though Todd Akin is a dangerous idiot, and even though if elected, it's not clear how he'll fit into the Senate GOP, since they all said all those very stern Political Burn Book things about him at press conferences, the GOP still wants him to win because they want the Senate like Steelers fans want a Super Bowl Ring. Partisan politicking is not about wanting what's best for America, it's about winning, no matter what kind of contemptible madman is on your team.